More encounters

Had a couple of interesting patient encounters this week:

• The gentleman who had been prescribed an acute course of diclofenac. While I was counselling him about how to take it and the possible side effects, he told me that he had had a stomach ulcer in the past.

I advised him to speak to the doctor again which he did there and then. He asked us to shred the prescription since the doctor had advised an alternative painkiller which he already had at home.

• The lady who came in with a script for a single 30g tube of permethrin cream for scabies. We always supply the PRODIGY PILs with conditions such as this (e.g. scabies, threadworms, headlice, etc) since they describe all the other important measures, apart from the drug treatment, that patients need to follow and patients often find it embarrassing to talk about these conditions (even in the private consultation area).

On running through the information in the leaflet the lady could see that she needed a second tube of cream for the second treatment 7 days later, plus treatments for the other members of her family so she went back to the surgery and came back with the relevant scripts.